Summer Day’s Out

As is my optimistic way, I have a plan for all of these unscheduled empty summer weeks!

Back in May, I made a list of fun places to visit, some are old favourites and others are long on the list of places we should visit, most are local and a few are full on day trips with even a potential over-nighter or two for good measure!

In general I wouldn’t want to be doing any of these days out alone, by alone I mean just the kids, but there will probably be the odd few times I will do that and on those days I will be picking my locations very carefully! The madness of any kind of structured road trips or being in places where we have to behave and be calm well, that’s too much to expect when out numbered by little ones without back up of daddio!

The plan is to fit in one good day out each week and with Morgan in summer camp the first week of holidays, I counted last week as a good starting point for my plan! It was a busy week for daddy so this was one I was taking on by myself.

I kept it local, packed a simple picnic and tried to be gentle enough on myself with time management! Once I got out on the road somewhere in the region of lunch time I was happy!

Our destination was Oak Park Forest in Carlow and if any of my local readers haven’t yet been, it’s really worth a trip!
The forest is really beautiful with easy walking paths that are accessible for bikes and buggies alike. In a matter of minutes the paths lead you to a big wide open green space with playground facilities and picnic benches and further on a second green area with exercise machines for the adults. My kids actually had more fun here on the exercise machines than in the playground as there were very few kids in this area.

We had a lovely day. All very easy going. No clock watching. They could run and shout and goof around to their hearts content.

We had an unexpected surprised when we found a facepainter had set up in the playground for the day so I arrived with three kids and left with one army camouflage dude and one flower fairy (and one stubborn bubba who say ‘No no thank you’ when offered some art work!).

I regularly talk of how I don’t spend enough time with the kids even though I spend all of my time around them. It was a real pleasure to just hang out with no stress, no squabbles, no agenda. Just us.

We’re bringing daddy along on the next trip tho because he was the one thing our day in Oak Park was missing! ❤